War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  With the cluster of burnt-out buildings, some of which looked like they’d been hit with actual missiles or anti-aircraft guns, the dusty skyline looked like part of a post-apocalyptic landscape. As he blinked into the rust-colored light reflecting off remaining windows, it occurred to Revik that’s exactly what it was.

  Within seconds of driving over that stretch of road, they glimpsed the first of the myriad of off-ramps that led into San Francisco itself. Some were broken or half-collapsed, likely from earthquakes, but most appeared to be in working order.

  A few were cluttered with stopped cars and what might have been more ambush traps and barricades set up by feral humans.

  Revik knew Jon had his foot jammed down on the accelerator at every open space of road they hit. He knew this mostly because he found himself looking down at Jon’s foot compulsively after they got around every obstruction––really, every few seconds, regardless of what was in the road––to make sure Jon had it pressed to the floor whenever he could.

  Even so, the desire to urge him faster grew intense enough that he had to bite his own tongue to remain silent.

  Wreg or someone else must have told Jon where to go.

  That, or Jon just knew.

  In either case, he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t screw around, taking roundabout routes.

  He aimed directly for where Allie was.

  Revik watched his brother-in-law’s face and foot, willing him faster even as he noted that Jon, without exception, took the shortest route possible to reach their destination.

  Revik knew where that was, too. He’d known before he fell asleep on the plane.

  They were going back to where he’d first laid eyes on her.

  They were going back to where it all began.

  When Allie was seven years old, her parents threw a birthday party for her there, in the yellow kitchen with the stained glass hummingbird hanging in the window. A group of neighborhood kids and half-drunk adults sang happy birthday to her there, laughing when the dog, Allie’s dog, started howling along with them.

  Revik watched her blow out the candles with Balidor from the front yard.

  They’d been shielded, operating under a push, and totally invisible to the humans inside the house. Even so, Revik swore he saw Allie look to the window more than once, frowning right at them, as if she could see them huddled under her mother’s favorite plum tree and couldn’t comprehend why they were lurking out there like weirdos instead of coming inside and having cake with everyone else.

  Jon and Allie’s childhood home on Fell Street, by the panhandle of Golden Gate park, had been home to another person in those years, too. That person had been at the birthday party; she sang louder than any of them, a glitter-covered princess hat perched on her jet-black hair, trailing a pink cloth that Allie’s mother sewed onto the hat for her.

  They’d been cute as fuck.

  Even Balidor chuckled at the howling dog and Cass’s hat, in between impressing upon Revik the importance of his new role, and the rules he needed to follow to fulfill it.

  Revik watched Allie every day after that.

  Not always in person, but he was always there, in one form or another.

  For the same reason, he knew Cass spent more time in that rundown, purple Victorian with Allie’s family and parents, than she had in her own home six blocks over.

  That was true until the day both of them moved out, and even after that, Cass spent every holiday there, including her own birthday.

  It was the thing Revik tried to hold on to, as they approached that achingly familiar part of the city. He forced himself to remember––to remember that birthday party and Cass’s ridiculous hat and the howling dog and the off-key singing. He remembered Allie’s mother’s cackle, the smile on her father’s face, the white and blue balloons, Allie getting scolded when she not-so-stealthily fed frosting to the overexcited dog.

  Cass had brought her here, back to all of their beginnings.

  In the end, Cass brought Allie home.

  49

  PIECES

  WREG ORDERED REVIK to stay in the car.

  He told Revik he should wait for a minute, while he and the others checked out the perimeter, made sure no ugly surprises waited for them inside the house.

  Jon saw Revik’s face, though.

  He could tell he hadn’t heard Wreg, or maybe that he flat-out didn’t care. He’d already shoved Oli off his lap before the car finished rolling to a stop on the trash-littered curb.

  Revik opened the car door and dragged his weight out of the opening using his unbroken hand, not looking at any of them. He didn’t pause, but began walking with long, limping strides over the sidewalk and up to the dilapidated wooden stairs. Jon watched along with the others as he limped up to the open front door of the purple Victorian, not seeming to see any of it but looking past it somehow, as if he were already inside.

  The house looked exactly the same as Jon remembered it.

  From the chipped black trim to the fading purple paint, the birds’ nests rimming the gables at the highest point, it could have been a week since he’d seen it last, instead of what had to be closer to five years.

  Compared to the rest of the city he’d seen, it was oddly, unnervingly untouched.

  Jon was still staring up, when a flurry of opening doors and moving bodies broke him out of his daze.

  The car’s shock springs groaned and the passenger seat clacked forward loudly, hitting the dash as infiltrators forced their way out of the car as fast as they could to follow Revik.

  Oli moved faster than any of them.

  Jon barely blinked and she was already halfway up the steps behind Revik, a gun in her hand by the time she caught up to him on the stoop, then pushed past him to take point before he could make his way through the open door.

  Of course, that was only because Revik’s leg wouldn’t allow him to go as fast as he wanted. Jon knew Revik would have run into that house if he could have, unarmed, without any of them following behind him, and without caring if Shadow waited for him on the other side, or with what.

  Swallowing, Jon pulled out his own gun when he saw Wreg do the same, exchanging a single grim look with the tattooed infiltrator before they ran up the sidewalk and the lawn after Jorag, Illeg and Loki. Jon leapt up the creaking wooden steps as soon as he reached their base, running past the porch he’d played Matchstick cars on with Allie when they were both too little for school, and where he’d sat with his mother after their father died.

  His vision blurred as he stared around the house, seeing his mother’s familiar furniture, remembering that the property hadn’t been sold yet, that it was still held in some dispute by the city since neither Jon nor Allie had been in a position to claim it, forcing their Aunt Carol to take the city to court and file for ownership on their behalf.

  Looking around at where homeless people had obviously been squatting inside, even around the police tape that still decorated the living room floor, Jon supposed it was kind of a moot point now. Money probably wasn’t going to have a hell of a lot of meaning in this new world, at least not for people like him.

  Jon heard a cry, and turned, stiffening.

  The voice was familiar enough, yet foreign enough, his heart rose to his throat.

  Desolation lived in that cry, a loss so deep, Jon felt it down to his very bones. It felt like someone dipped him in ice and left him standing there, naked and trembling.

  He looked for Wreg, more out of instinct than intention, and met Neela’s gaze instead, from where she stood guard between the kitchen and the main hallway, an automatic rifle cradled in her arms. From her wide eyes, which looked bright enough for tears, she’d recognized the voice behind that cry, as well.

  Looking at her, Jon felt his pain worsen, if only because her face confirmed what he’d heard was real.

  He moved mechanically, running towards the sound.

  He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be here at all, not anymore, but he couldn’t stop h
imself from running any more than he suspected Revik could stop himself vaulting up those steps, even to his probable death.

  When Jon stopped in the doorway to his mother’s bedroom, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. He saw a lamp broken in the corner, what looked like a dried smear of blood. Then his eyes found the bed.

  Revik sat there, cradling a form in his arms, his face buried across the front of her.

  Allie was naked, her body limp where he held her.

  Jon found his eyes drawn down her body, looking at the lower half of her, where someone had obviously cut her open, stitching her up afterwards and covering the wound with a transparent sealant. Whoever had done it, they hadn’t bothered to so much as throw a sheet over her when they finished.

  Bile rose to his throat as he looked at the wound, as he realized what it meant, along with a horror so intense he couldn’t think at all for a moment. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Wreg pushed past him, crouching down next to Revik and wrapping a thick arm around the Elaerian’s back.

  “Nenz!” Wreg said, shaking him a little. “Nenz… gods, brother. She’s not dead!”

  Revik only held her tighter.

  Jon felt a dense pulse leave the Elaerian’s light, and found himself thinking that if Revik still had access to the telekinesis, Wreg would have been thrown across the room. As it was, if he didn’t have to release Allie to do it, Jon suspected Revik would have shoved Wreg off violently just to get him away.

  “Nenzi. Brother.” Wreg combed his fingers through the other man’s dark hair, practically cooing to him, rubbing his back with a muscular, tattooed hand. “Nenz… we have to get her out of here. Now. She’s not dead, but she could be soon. We have to move her.”

  That time, the infiltrator’s words seemed to penetrate.

  Revik looked at him, then back at Allie, his eyes lost, bright with tears but without a single thought living inside them. He let Wreg prise Allie out of his fingers and arms, and knelt there, watching, as the larger seer wrapped her body in a cotton sheet, picking her up as carefully as if she’d been made of glass.

  Jon fought to speak.

  When he finally did, his voice came out unnaturally loud, as if he’d just broken something, as if he’d dropped a tray of porcelain vases inside a quiet church.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he said.

  Wreg shot him a warning look, glancing warily at Revik.

  Don’t call attention to yourself right now, brother, the ex-Rebel sent, his thoughts barely a whisper. He’s totally fucking cracked… don’t do it. For the love of the gods, brother, hear me on this. He can’t be reasonable right now…

  What’s wrong with her? Jon asked, in his mind.

  Jon was trying to scan her, to get closer to her light, but Wreg shoved him off, violently that time, and without any attempt to soften what he’d done.

  Don’t fucking touch her, Jon! I mean it. You can’t reach her, anyway. She’s gone.

  Swallowing, Jon nodded, almost without realizing he’d done it. Gone? What does that mean, gone? Where is she?

  Wreg sent a pulse of grief at him, but didn’t answer in words.

  What’s wrong with her? Jon asked again. Wreg, you just said she’s not dead.

  They put her on wires, Wreg sent, his light heavy, dark with a numbing grief. Highest setting, likely for hours. It’s like electrocuting the connections between her aleimi and her body. It probably would have killed a regular seer. Physically, I mean. It would have killed them dead. As it is, she might as well be…

  Wreg trailed, as if realizing suddenly who he was talking to.

  He looked up, staring at Jon with his black eyes.

  Jon couldn’t move.

  He just stood there, unable to see Wreg anymore, or Allie… or Revik. After a few more minutes of standing there, swaying, he felt tears pouring down his face, but was powerless to stop that, too. He could feel it now. As soon as Wreg started talking, he could feel what the other seer was telling him.

  Gods, he sent. Wreg… is she some kind of vegetable?

  That time, Wreg didn’t answer him, even without words.

  The other seers all followed Wreg as he carried Allie back out to the main room. Jorag and Loki watched and half-supported Revik, although he didn’t seem to see either of them. Jon grew aware of sounds around him, murmured conversations. He heard a few of their words, here and there, but never managed to arrange them into a coherent picture in his mind.

  Hospital…

  Balidor sending help…

  SCARB connections…

  Grid failures in…

  Stabilize containment fields for…

  Tracking aleimic current with…

  Jon gave up, shutting them all out. He struggled to keep from shutting down entirely, or maybe just walking out of there. He lingered in the background, instead, watching as the others sat around Allie, giving her light, taking turns going into the Barrier to do––something.

  Allie didn’t move, though.

  Jon couldn’t feel anything from her at all. She was like a broken doll, somehow still holding the blush of life, without anything that life should have carried with it.

  She was empty. Gutted.

  Somewhere in that silence, he heard Wreg murmur to Illeg that they had to feed her light just to remind her body it was still alive.

  Jon glanced over at Revik, just in time to see Jorag hit him in the neck with a syringe. The syringe was fat, thicker than Jon’s thumb, and filled with some ungodly number of CCs of an amber-colored fluid Jon recognized from when they’d had to sedate Revik in the Tank.

  It didn’t hit him all at once, even so.

  Wreg caught him around the waist and led him to the couch before he could fall all the way, covering him with a few more blankets from Jon’s childhood bedroom and assigning Jorag and Neela to keep light in him, too, and keep him from letting himself die in the Barrier.

  Through all of that, Jon just stood there, helpless.

  He knew he should be doing something.

  He knew he should, but he had no idea what.

  Eventually, he walked out to the back porch, and looked out over his mother’s overgrown garden, and the rose bushes, now absent of flowers, that had pushed their way almost onto the wooden deck. Their mother had always gone more for the English garden look, out of control and vaguely untended-looking, kind of like their mother herself.

  He sat numbly on a moldy, white-wicker chair, feeling the woven strands crack and bend under his weight. The thing had deteriorated even from what Jon remembered, with broken pieces sticking out all over the backrest and arms, although the legs remained sturdy under him.

  He watched Loki smoke a hiri, unable to feel much of anything for what felt like a very long time. When Loki went back inside, letting the screen door slam behind him as he retreated, Jon remained where he was, watching smoky clouds pass in a yellow sky with cold wind.

  San Francisco winters, the only time you could see the sun.

  It struck him suddenly, that today was Revik’s birthday.

  The thought was the thing to finally reach him.

  An image rose unwilling to his mind: Allie’s head thrown back in laughter as they sat around a conference room table, planning the ways she wanted to surprise him. They’d discussed decorations, music, food––that ridiculous present she’d found him, somehow even in the midst of an apocalypse. She’d sent scouts out for days, finally securing a red-faced roan horse in the police stables that miraculously, no one had eaten.

  She’d wanted to smuggle the damned thing in through the hotel’s lobby, ride it up to Revik while they wheeled out the cake––some private joke the two of them had, from when they’d first bonded at that cabin in the Himalayas.

  She’d even had her hand in the design of the cake, plotting for weeks on the frosting and ingredients with the chefs of the Third Jewel.

  Jon felt himself choking as he tried to cry, and couldn’t.

  He sat there, unable to m
ove, when a voice rose in his head, so familiar, it froze his limbs, wiping out everything he’d felt, only seconds before.

  So you don’t think Revik likes my birthday present, then? Cass made a pouty face, but her eyes smiled at him from the dark. Pity. I put so much thought into it, too.

  “Cass…” Jon spoke aloud, but only in a whisper, losing his voice as he saw her face swim forward from that nothingness. You killed her… gods. You killed her, Cass. You killed Allie.

  No. Cass’s expression hardened. Her voice turned sharply warning. No, Jon… I saved her. This was a compromise. Shadow wanted to kill her. I proposed this, instead.

  Waiting for his reaction, she smiled when Jon didn’t give her one.

  Maybe I just wanted to see what Allie’s sexy honey Revi’ would do.

  Behind Jon’s eyes, Cass’s red-lipsticked smile grew wide.

  …After all, if I kept his precious wife at least marginally alive, he’s still in the game, right? And the poor thing’s been so out of the game, for so many years now. He’s probably hungry as hell for a good fight.

  Winking, she blew Jon a kiss.

  You wait, Jon. He’ll thank me for this in the end. By the time he finds me, I should be pretty good at the telekinesis. Maybe by then, he’ll be over his melodrama about Allie. Maybe I can make him an offer he won’t refuse.

  Jon couldn’t make sense of her words.

  He could barely make sense of his own thoughts. The only one that made sense to him didn’t answer anything. It didn’t really ask anything either, since he knew she wouldn’t be able to answer it, at least not in a way that would make sense to him.

  He asked it anyway, unable to not ask.

  How could you do this? he said. Allie loved you more than anyone. You were family to her. I loved you, Cass. Gods, Revik loved you. So much.

  I’m guessing he’s not feeling a lot of love for me now, Cass said, still smiling that smile he knew and didn’t know. Do you think that’ll change if I raise his kid for him? After all, he’s a bit of a masochist, right? Maybe this will turn him on, once he gets over the angsty bits?